weakly

• IPA^(key): /ˈwiːkli/
• Rhymes: -iːk.li
• Homophone: weekly

From Old English wāclīċe (“weakly”), equivalent to weak +‎ -ly (adjectival suffix); compare Old English wāclīċ (“weak; ignoble; mean”), and Old Norse veikligr (“weakly; sick”); both ultimately from Proto-Germanic *waikalīkaz (“weakly; weak”).

weakly (comparative weaklier, superlative weakliest)

1. Frail, sickly or of a delicate constitution; weak.
   • 1885, Sir Richard Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Night 18:

     I lay in weakly case and confined to my bed for four months before I was able to rise and health returned to me.

   • 1889, WB Yeats, The Ballad of Moll Magee:

     I'd always been but weakly, / And my baby was just born; / A neighbour minded her by day, / I minded her till morn.

   • 1922, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob's Room:

     "Oh, a huge crab," Jacob murmured—and begins his journey on weakly legs on the sandy bottom.

From Middle English weykly, equivalent to weak +‎ -ly (adverbial suffix). Compare Old High German weihlīcho (“weakly”), Middle English wocliche, wokli, wacliche (both from Proto-Germanic *waikalīkō).

weakly (comparative more weakly, superlative most weakly)

1. With little strength or force.
   • 2002, T. H. Worthy, The Lost World of the Moa: Prehistoric Life of New Zealand, page 128:

     The basitemporal platform is flat in posterior view because the mamillar tuberosities are very weakly developed.